A 36-year-old Baptist minister from Howard, MO, the Reverend Cordy “C.T.” Vivian was the oldest of the Nashville Riders. A close friend of James Lawson, he had gained the trust of the students involved in the Nashville Movement by participating in the 1960 Nashville sit-in campaign to end lunch counter desegregation. On May 24, 1961, he was arrested in Jackson, MS on the formal charge of breach of peace and imprisoned at Parchman State Prison Farm.

One of the Civil Rights Movement’s most respected and revered figures, he was named director of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) affiliates in 1963, and later founded and led several civil rights organizations, including Vision, the National Anti-Klan Network, the Center of Democratic Renewal, and Black Action Strategies and Information Center (BASIC).

Freedom Rider, Etta Simpson – 50th Anniversary

Freedom Rider, Betty Daniels Rosemond – 50th Anniversary

Inauguration 2013, Freedom Riders Reflect on Past: ‘There Is Hope’

Hallelujah I’m a travellin’
Hallelujah Ain’t it fine
Hallelujah I’m a travellin’
Down freedom’s main line

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About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles.
Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures.
A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.

UPDATE, Feb. 2: The White House released this photograph of the president at the Camp David skeet range on Aug. 4, 2012. We are pleased the White House has become more forthcoming about this matter, though it does not quite answer the questions concerning the president’s “all the time” language.

Found this at POU about the President Skeet Shooting and the skeptics:

QOakaJP

Morning, POU

So, I woke up and saw the photo of PBO skeet shooting, and it probably shouldn’t have affected me as much as it did…but it did, and I had to post a mini-rant over at TOD to let of some of my frustration, not so much at the WH, but just at what we have to still deal with in 2013:

To be honest, I’m just tired of the “Black person’s word is not good enough” syndrome that the public has, not only at historic levels with this president, but in general, throughout our history. And people have made careers out of portraying him as nothing more than a liar and fraud who cannot be trusted. Barack Obama graduates at the top of his class at Harvard, after editing the Law Review- and this is PUBLIC record, mind you- but it somehow becomes acceptable in the mainstream of politics to wonder and assume and accuse this man of being secretly dumb. A below-average slacker and/or trickster who only got into a good school because of affirmative action or other loopholes, and who is lying about his grades. Barack Obama tells you about his own life story in a book written long before he was on the national scene, but it takes multiple white authors penning Obama family bios, *confirming* what he already told you, for the public to take notice. The president tells you he was born in Hawaii, and his word is degraded to the point that legal and historical contracts are not enough to contain their hate. The president tells you what he did last week for fun, and he is roundly mocked…they demand photos to prove he did what he said he did in private, for leisure. What’s next…providing DNA test results to the public to prove he is the father of his own children? Maybe a sex tape to show that his happy married life is not just a sham. Or better yet, just have constant rolling footage from the residential quarters of the white house, so we can all know for sure that he works out in the morning, brushes his teeth twice a day, and doesn’t sneak in a second dessert (because revealing FLOTUS & her “Let’s Move” campaign as frauds is its own separate industry…)

Certain facets of American society have vested interest in making sure that they control the narrative of individuals, especially exceptional individuals who go against the status quo. Anything that they cannot craft, or grasp for themselves, had to be distorted. And we’re seeing it happen in real time. And in that sense, I understand why the WH decides to release certain information like this). BTW, this isn’t just something that can be blamed on “the right wing” or “conspiracy theorists”or “southern racists.” It is in our media and in the way many of us have conditioned ourselves not to trust certain people. And in the end, while we all know that PBO is in a damned if you do/damned if you don’t situation, I still can’t help but feel uncomfortable whenever they feel they are obliged to play along with these people that so clearly hate the man.

Citizens United To Supreme Court: Landmark School Desegregation Case Was Wrong

By Ian Millhiser on Feb 1, 2013 at 1:30 pm

Citizens United, the conservative group that successfully sued to enable wealthy corporations to buy elections, also has it in for same-sex couples. Yet an amicus brief they recently filed in the Supreme Court backing the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act would not simply deny marriage equality to gay people, it calls upon the Supreme Court to toss out a landmark decision ending public school segregation in the District of Columbia and declare that the federal government is free to discriminate against minorities and women

Until May, 17, 1954, the day upon which this Court struck down “racially segregated public schools” in the States under the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was generally understood that the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment did not have an equal protection component. As this Court observed in Adarand, “[t]hrough the 1940′s, this Court has routinely taken the view . . . that, ‘unlike the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifth contains no equal protection clause and it provides no guaranty against discriminatory legislation by Congress. However, in Bolling v. Sharpe, this Court shoehorned equal protection into the due process text by sheer will, declaring “it would unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government.”

To the contrary, it was and is eminently “thinkable” that the Reconstruction Congress, led by abolitionist Republicans, would propose an amendment to the Constitution that would increase the powers of the federal government at the expense of the states.

To translate this a bit, the Fourteenth Amendment provides that “[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” and thus this guarantee against discrimination explicitly applies only to state laws and not to the federal government. On the same day that the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education, however, the Court also held in Bolling that a shield against public school segregation is one of the liberties protected by the Fifth Amendment, which does apply to the federal government. Thus, the District of Columbia, which is a federal entity, could not have segregated public schools.

Citizens United is now claiming that Bolling was wrong, and that the Constitution does absolutely nothing to prevent the United States from engaging in discrimination of any kind. If the justices buy their argument — as they were all too willing to do in the case that bears Citizens United’s name — it would mean that Congress is free to set up its own Jim Crow laws.

Yes, in the wake of the current president remarking that he has occasionally gone skeet shooting at Camp David, there appears to be a Skeet Shooting Truther, or “Skeeter,” movement picking up steam on the far-right.

On Fox News Channel’s The Five, Eric Bolling and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino called out the president for lying about skeet shooting:

Sounds a lot like Where’s the birth certificate? to me. Later, Perino added, “They release photograph of President Obama doing everything except for flossing. What he really does, he golfs all the time. We have pictures of that.”

Glenn Beck chimed in: “Obama says he goes skeet shooting all the time. Haha, right… and I gave up a career in the NFL for talk radio.”

On CNN, Erin Burnett hosted a segment with panelists David Frum and Roland Martin on the president’s skeet shooting remark and asked the question with an incredulous tone, “So, now you’re going to say you do it all the time, don’t you have to kind of prove it?” Thankfully Roland Martin shouted, “No!” and made a solid case for the absurdity of the whole thing.

Now, sure. I get it. The conservative media establishment loves to wallow in these ridiculous conspiracy theories about the president. It’s all part of the Clint Eastwood Invisible Obama syndrome. They attack a nonexistent president and make things up because they’ve got nothing else to say.

But then the newest inductee in the House Crazy Caucus, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), appeared in the Burnett segment and challenged the president to a skeet shooting contest in order to determine whether he was telling the truth when he said he shoots skeet at Camp David. Blackburn said,

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The prosecutor in the case of the former neighborhood watch leader charged in the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin is asking the judge to deny a defense request to delay the trial.

In a written response to the motion to postpone the trial until November, state attorney Bernie de la Rionda said that George Zimmerman’s attorneys weren’t following the judge’s suggestions for obtaining wanted discovery documents faster.

On Wednesday, Zimmerman’s attorneys asked for more time to prepare, saying prosecutors had been slow to turn over evidence. De la Rionda responded saying the defense “wants the state to do its job.”

Zimmerman is claiming he acted in self-defense in shooting Martin last year and is pleading not guilty to a second-degree murder charge.

Reblogged this on Big Blue Dot Y'all and commented:
It is a “righteous tribute.” Thanks so much for this. I never cease to be shocked at how ignorant people are about the Civil Rights Movement. It is almost like white people in particular feel that if they acknowledge MLK, then they met their quota for caring. I like to re-watch Eyes on the Prize every couple of years. Such important history. Remind yourself. These people changed the world.

Thanks so much for this. I never cease to be shocked at how ignorant people are about the Civil Rights Movement. It is almost like white people in particular feel that if they acknowledge MLK, then they met their quota for caring. I like to rewatch Eyes on the Prize every couple of years. Such important history.

My pleasure. I’ve enjoyed presenting the series to the blog but there are more details to the struggle that you can’t get them all in on a blog. The abuse the Freedom Riders suffered were incredible. Reading about the open lawlessness and seeing state police participate in the violence is unbelievable.

The school board in Newtown, Conn., voted unanimously Thursday night to request an armed guard for each of the district’s four elementary schools.

The armed “security resource officers,” or SROs, operate in the district’s high school and middle schools. According to the school board, the minutes of whose meeting are available online, there has been wide support for adding the officers to elementary schools since the tragic Sandy Hook shooting almost two months ago.

The only remaining barrier appears to be financial: SROs are police officers, and their salaries come out of the police budget, board members explained. The board of selectman and the board of finance still need to approve the school board’s request before police appear in schools.

At the meeting, after board member Richard Gaines read the motion, another board member asked for clarification: “Does this put an officer in each of our schools?” He said. Then: “Is that enough?”

An influential Republican senator has threatened to put on hold President Obama’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, raising once again the possibility that the gun-regulating agency will not have a director.

The president two weeks ago nominated acting ATF Director B. Todd Jones to become the agency’s full-time director. The ATF has been without a director for six years. But on Thursday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a statement criticizing Jones and questioning his ability to lead the ATF. Grassley criticized Jones’s decisions in a Minnesota legal case involving housing discrimination and raised questions about an ATF operation in Milwaukee. He also criticized Jones for not answering questions from his staff about his decisions at ATF in the aftermath of the bungled Phoenix gun operation known as Fast and Furious.

NEW YORK — The New York Knicks will host 150 children, their families and teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School today when they play the Sacramento Kings.

Twenty or more children from the Newtown (Conn.) Choir from Sabrinas Encore Products will sing the national anthem before the game, the second time this week the Knicks and children from the devastated community about 90 minutes away will be together.

The Knicks organization on Tuesday visited Newtown, where 20 children and six adults were shot and killed at the school in December.

The team, the Knicks City Dancers and Madison Square Garden’s Garden of Dreams Foundation hosted 400 children from Sandy Hook Elementary (now Chalk Hill Elementary) and their families at the Newtown Youth Academy in what was called a “Knicks Family Fun Day” event.

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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.